Page 127 of Flickerstate

“You think I didn’t try? She’s not picking up.”

“Oh. If she’s not interested in what you have to say, I won’t play messenger girl.”

“I wanted to talk toyou.”

I sink a little deeper into the thin mattress. I feel unbearably weary. “At this point…why?”

He inhales loudly, like I gut-punched him. For a few seconds, I just hear him breathing. Then he says in a rush: “I didn’t know Jake would die. I didn’t know. I didn’tknow. Do you believe me?”

Sadness knifes me. “What—what kind of answer are you looking for here?”

“The truth.”

“The truth?”

“Yes.”

I cover my eyes and speak into darkness. “You didn’t know. You suspected. But most of the time, you could hide your suspicions from yourself, because of how badly you needed Candace to live.”

In my ear, a choked laugh. “You really never give me an inch. So, what, you think you’re better than I am?”

The truth. “I’m luckier.”

“Remember that,” he says. “But also—I think, if we’d met under different circumstances, you could’ve been really good for me. Bye, Norah.”

He ends the call.

I lie there, heartsick, thinking about all the ways I’ve been lucky. About the people who’ve been good for me. About the people I want to be good for.

I stand up and text Vik:Come talk to me?

***

A few minutes later, Vik slips into my single. Suddenly, we’re alone in a small room that smells of citrus floor cleaner and my shampoo. The situation fills me with animal unease. He feels so present: the space his body carves out of the air, his black hair curling against his neck, the slow sound of his breath. I could cross the distance between us in one long step.

But I’m scared to. If I move toward him, I’m almost sure he’ll meet me halfway—but who knows better than a navigator thatalmost sureisn’t certain?

Maybe he won’t want me back.

That would make a fitting punishment for me, a fitting end to my story with him. Me wanting, him turning away. Just to put a pin in the lesson I’ve been painfully learning since beasts swarmed meand Dad: You can’t achieve everything alone. You are not an island, entire of itself. Sometimes, despite your strength and cunning, you find yourself as horridly dependent on other people—on friends, acquaintances, and strangers—as you were when you were a smelly baby. And sometimes your neediness won’t summon, won’tmerit, the help or friendship or love you’re inwardly begging for.

But sometimes it will.

I make a sad, muffled, tiny, yearning noise.

He lifts his head and examines my face, a question in his eyes.

“I don’t care about your bite,” he says quietly. “I mean—I care about curing you. More than anything. What I’m saying is, I want to be with you. Bite or no bite. For however long it takes to cure you. And after that too. So do you want…”

I can’t speak. I just nod.

We meet halfway.

***

It takes me, Vik, Candace, Bree, and Mirabel ten hours, three snack runs, uncountable nosebleeds, and one vomit break in our previously pristine block bathroom to manage a five-person league.

Afterward, the experience of that much power drops through my mind like fine flour through a sieve—or maybe,I think with a shiver of nauseated memory,like molten steel through sand.Once it’s over, I can’t remember what it’s like to havethat many eyes, what we saw aswe. But my bicep is bare and smooth—except for thirteen small white scars.